


Stricken

by viiemzee



Series: The Karnstein Backstory [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:56:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2617607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viiemzee/pseuds/viiemzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever our souls are made of, her and mine are the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stricken

It was always there, whether Carmilla was actually reading it or not. Sometimes, Laura thought she maybe did it for comfort – just read over familiar passages over and over again to get a sense that maybe, things weren’t all that bad. Life as an immortal wasn’t all that great, anyway. But she had never got a handle on the book, on what it was about or who wrote it, or what language it was written in.

It was obvious that Carmilla could probably read any language in the world, so Laura didn’t try, lest it turn out to be something older than Sumarian.

So she wondered and she thought and imagined for a few weeks, watching as Carmilla sometimes read the book before bed, or thumbed through pages and just sat there, silently absorbing words. She just watched, didn’t comment, and found it quite comforting sometimes.

It wasn’t until she came home slightly drunk and a little bit tired that she actually let her curiosity get the better of her.

Carmilla was out, doing god knows what, but probably making sure that everything was safe from her Mother and her minions. She had left the red book lying open on her bed, pages to the mattress, almost as if it was taking a nap from its infinite wealth of knowledge it apparently stored inside it. Laura took a quick look around the room, almost afraid that she might glimpse the vampire lurking in the shadows under her bed, like the cat she constantly dreamed about, but there really was no one around.

So she grabbed the book and looked at the page it was already opened on.

_Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same._

Laura squinted, knowing that she knew this quote from _somewhere_ , and then squinted even harder when she saw that the ‘him’ had been crossed out, replaced by a ‘her’ written over it in small, neat letters. They looked old, worn out, like the book, as if they had been written in a much tougher thing than pen ink...

“Laura?”

She hadn’t heard the door. She turned around so quickly she almost hurt her neck, and dropped the book, smiling at Carmilla as she walked over.

“Carm! Hi!”

“Hi, what are you doing?”

“Boy, you get straight to the point, don’t you!”

“Laura...”

She looked down at the bed covers, realized she was on Carmilla’s bed, and shot off it, stumbling forward and crashing into her bed stomach first, making a small ‘oof’ as she fell to the ground. In a split second, she felt herself lifted and put onto her bed; opening her eyes, Carmilla was hovering over her, a mix of worry and annoyance plastered on her face.

“You’re drunk.”

“Lil’ bit.”

“Laura...”

“Why do you have a copy of _Wuthering Heights_?”

Carmilla laughed, looking at the book on the floor, and picked it up, closing it and fondly stroking the frayed edges, yellowed paper.

“Is that what this is about?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You could have just asked, instead of snooping, creampuff.”

“But I wanted to know!”

Carmilla didn’t really answer, just sat down on her bed, alternating glances between the book and Laura on the bed, who had sat up now and was looking at Carmilla curiously.

“Why do you have it?”

Carmilla shrugged, putting the book under her pillow and lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Why do you think?”

“Maybe because you knew Emily Bronte and it’s like, your way of remembering an old friend?”

“Never met the Brontes, so no, try again.”

“Just tell me, please?”

Silence fell, and Laura could have sworn Carmilla had fallen asleep with her eyes open, and was just about to give up and put her head on her own pillow, when a soft whisper of a quote came from the other occupant of the room.

“She burned too bright for this world.”

“What?”

“It’s a quote, sunshine. From the book. ‘She burned too bright for this world.’ That was Ell for you.”

Laura barely had a moment to register, within her slowly sobering-brain, what Carmilla had just said, before the girl smiled and spoke again.

“It was her favourite book.”


End file.
